Jenkins operator it's a Kubernetes native operator which fully manages Jenkins on Kubernetes. It was built with immutability and declarative configuration as code in mind.
It provides out of the box:
- integration with Kubernetes
- pipelines as code
- extensibility via groovy scripts or configuration as code plugin
- security and hardening
The main reason why we decided to write the jenkins-operator is the fact that we faced a lot of problems with standard Jenkins deployment. We want to make Jenkins more robust, suitable for dynamic and multi-tenant environments.
Some of the problems we want to solve:
- volumes handling (AWS EBS volume attach/detach issue when using PVC)
- installing plugins with incompatible versions or security vulnerabilities
- better configuration as code
- lack of end to end tests
- handle graceful shutdown properly
- security and hardening out of the box
- orphaned jobs with no jnlp connection
- make errors more visible for end users
- backup and restore for jobs history
Feel free to file issues or pull requests.
Common:
- simple API for generating Kubernetes events using one common format
- code clean up and more tests
Base configuration:
- TLS/SSL configuration
User configuration:
- backup and restore for Jenkins jobs running as standalone job (AWS, GCP, Azure)
- trigger backup job before pod deletion using preStop k8s hooks
- verify Jenkins configuration events